Confused on ILC DX

Hi Jan,  Nothing to add to Deanna's thorough response.  May all go well with your surgery tomorrow.  Here's hoping for negative nodes, low Oncotype, and quick recovery. G.

It could also just be how women input their status information, given the spaces available and the information they want to share. User error or perhaps incomplete updating of information with a change in stage. It's common with an early-stage diagnosis to go looking for people who perhaps had what we have but now are Stage IV. It's not that "simple," and the Stage IV women don't input their status information for our benefit - Stage IV trumps all of the other bits of information, so it's not important. I think if I were to find that I had mets, I'd just say, "Oh, crap," and update my stage status - I don't think I'd go back and update everything else. In addition, the approach is so different when it's Stage IV. They don't necessarily go back and take out more nodes - often removing nodes is for the purpose of staging, anyway, and certainly if you have mets, they know the stage, if that makes sense. So if you started with a small low-grade tumor and a clean SNB, but then at some point later mets were found, do you have new node information to post? It's not material at that point...

I think we tend to be so surprised by the initial diagnosis that we vow to learn everything we can to avoid another surprise, like mets. But to some extent, cancer is going to do what it's going to do, so all we can do is learn what treatments might best help us out and then go forth and live our lives...

Hi Jan,  It's good to hear that you are recovering well and that the nodes were negative.  Rest up!  G.